Short advocacy film documenting community issues in the Western Cape, around the impacts of diamond mining undertaken by De Beers.

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“Halt the sale of De Beers operations until they fix our area”, says Cape West Coast community.

The imminent sale of De Beers’ diamond mining operations on the Cape West Coast must be halted until full disclosure and proper consultation with all affected parties has taken place, says the community of Hondeklipbaai.

The department of Mineral Resources (DMR) is expected to make a decision on the approval of the amended environmental management programme, and the transfer of mining rights to Tranx Hex, within weeks. The community launched an awareness campaign this week, to urge DMR to postpone their decision.

Speaking at a media briefing in Cape Town, Hondeklipbaai community leader David Markus said the sale cannot be allowed to continue until they were assured that the companies would honour their obligations to rehabilitate the area.

“We make an urgent call on the DMR to hold these companies to account and to not forget the communities that are directly affected. Too often big mining companies exploit the country’s natural resources without undoing the damage they cause”, said Markus.

He was speaking at the launch of two documentary videos in which the direct damage to the Hondeklipbaai area can be seen. The community is on the West Coast of South Africa, approximately 300 kms outside Cape Town.

Markus was supported by the Bench Mark Foundation at the briefing. Bench Mark Foundation earlier this year asked De Beers Consolidated Mines to make substantial revisions to the Environmental Management Programme Report which will become the only legal tool to prevent a lasting negative legacy from diamond mining in Namaqualand.

“The area in Hondeklipbaai is rich in biodiversity, with some species of plants and animals that are not see anywhere else in the world.

“This area must be protected and conserved, and we’re not convinced that the current plans will not leave the area exposed to more risks. Their budget for this kind of repair work is wholly inadequate, and it is the people of Hondeklipbaai that will end up paying for it, for generations to come,” said Markus.

‘For many people, diamonds have lost much of their sparkle in recent years. The knowledge that so-called blood or conflict diamonds have been used to finance some of Africa’s most murderous wars and civil conflicts has made it difficult to look at the gems as objects of beauty with which to decorate our bodies.

The appalling working conditions and human rights abuses associated with some diamond mining operations don’t make matters any easier either. But even in situations where diamonds are mined legally by internationally respected, supposedly law-abiding companies, the impact on local communities and the environment can be devastating. De Beers’ Namaqualand Mines on the West Coast of South Africa’s Northern Cape Province are a good example of this.

De Beers started mining diamonds in this area in 1927. Gem quality stones are found here in “alluvial” and “placer” deposits — former gravel beaches and stream channels where the diamonds were dropped by rivers that scoured them from kimberlite pipes located hundreds of kilometers inland and carried them towards the sea millennia ago.

By the end of the 20th century, De Beers had extracted some 31 million carats of diamonds from its Namaqualand Mines located along a 150 kilometer stretch of coastline by strip mining parts of the land to a depth of about 40 meters. With profitability falling and the downturn of the global economy, operations were suspended in 2010 and in May of this year De Beers announced the sale of the mines to a much smaller local diamond mining company called Trans Hex.

Clearly De Beers has made a lot of money during their more than 80 years of excavating diamonds here, but the legacy they have left for local communities is one of crushing poverty and a devastated landscape. In this short video clip from Green Renaissance, Dawid Markus, a community leader in the small town of Hondeklipbaai, outlines their struggles:

Geographically isolated, Hondeklipbaai has around 1,000 inhabitants and a crippling unemployment rate of 80%. In the past, many families relied very heavily on work at the mines, but nowadays there are precious few job opportunities of any kind left.

The community has lodged an official claim for the land on which the mines were established, which they consider to be their ancestral heritage. They’ve objected to the sale of the mines, saying there can be no question of transferring ownership when there is an existing dispute over whose land it is in the first place.

De Beers’ operations have left the land in an appalling condition. Mining activities have left an area the size of approximately 2,000 football fields disturbed and un-rehabilitated. Although this region is very arid, it forms part of the Succulent Karoo Biodiversity Hotspot, one of 42 areas that are internationally recognized for their rich variety in flora and fauna.

This is a very special and fragile habitat that is home to a large number of endemic plant species which occur nowhere else on the planet and 45 of which are threatened with extinction as a result of the mining. It is also the site of one of the world’s largest arid estuarine systems.

Under South African law, once a mine is closed down, companies are obliged to provide the financial and other resources to ensure that disturbed areas are returned to a state that is equivalent to or better than it was before the mining started. They are also required to contribute to the social security and development of the communities they leave behind once they close shop, ensuring that alternative land uses are found and employment opportunities are created.

Local inhabitants like Dawid Markus, together with labor unions and environmental organizations like Conservation South Africa, the Bench Marks Foundation and the Centre for Environmental Rights have raised grave concerns that De Beers is attempting to avoid these legal obligations by selling off the mines to Trans Hex. They question Trans Hex’s financial and technical capacity to fulfill these obligations and point out that Trans Hex has a very poor record when it comes to environmental rehabilitation of their existing mines in the area.

It’s imperative that De Beers, a hugely profitable international corporation, is held to account for the environmental damage it has wrought in this area and that they return it to a sustainable ecological condition as is their obligation by law.’

Madihlaba, T. The Fox in the Henhouse: the environmental impact of diamond mining on communities in South Africa. In McDonald, D. (ed.) Environmental Justice in South Africa, University of Cape Town Press, CT, pp.156-167

On 4th November 2009, the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal led a tour of Durban that conveys the gritty reality faced by ordinary Durbanites. This video documents the highlights of the tour, including the ‘toxic’ South Durban Industrial Basin, the tented community of Crossmoor and, on a more positive note, the development of an organic community garden and biodigester in the township of Cato Manor.

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When critically‑minded people visit Durban and seek out a ‘reality tour’ typically denied by the mainstream tourist circuit, one of the stops is the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu‑Natal. Located at the highest point in Durban (the top floors of Memorial Tower Building in Glenwood), the Centre introduces sympathetic visitors to the work of leading social activists and environmentalists. The sites that kombi‑taxis arranged by CCS reach include an inner‑city tense with resistance to xenophobia and gentrification, the largest petrochemical complex in a residential area in Africa, a variety of shack settlements and working‑class ‘African’, ‘Indian’ and ‘coloured’ neighbourhoods, the hotly‑contested source of Durban’s water at Inanda Dam, and the university environs.

John Vidal in Durban, www.guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 December 2011: Why south Durban stinks of rotten cabbage, eggs and cat wee

In the ‘centre of toxic Africa’, residents say they can identify nausea, drowsiness, vomiting and headaches by industrial sources.

There’s the metaphorical whiff of diplomats burning the midnight oil to find a deal at the the UN climate talks. But 5km away in south Durban, the air really does smell of rotten cabbage, cat wee and almonds.

With two crude oil refineries, South Africa‘s two biggest paper mills, its biggest container port, a dozen chemical companies, several major landfill sites and a huge number of factories together producing 80% of South Africa‘s oil products and much of its industrial emissions, south Durban locals have learned to identify the coughs, nausea, drowsiness, vomiting and headaches they suffer by their sources.

Oil companies are said to create a stink of a cocktail of rotten eggs and burned matches, a carworks reeks of ethanol and the vinegar smell comes from a leather company.

South African Environmental Justice struggles against “toxic” petrochemical industries in South Durban: The Engen Refinery Case

This case study explores the South Durban community’s struggle against disproportionate exposure to a hazardous environment and sulphur dioxide pollution, and at the same time, being faced with “clear and present” health hazards linked to petrochemical industrial production. To unpack the environmental justice challenges facing post-apartheid South Africa, the case study examines the role played by the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance in articulating environmental injustices and poor environmental responsibility of the petrochemical industry in South Africa.